A user can have several reasons for replacing an existing computing system such as a personal computer (“PC”). For example, the computing system may experience a hardware fault that requires replacement. Alternately, the user may desire to upgrade to a computing system with better performance characteristics.
Replacing an existing computing system presents a problem, however, with respect to data stored on the existing system. The user often wishes to maintain the data, and migrate the data to the new computing system.
Therefore, it is desirable for the user to have a backup, or copy, of the data stored on the existing computing system. For example, such a copy, or “image”, can comprise data stored on the hard drive of an existing computing system. The user can then copy the image onto the new computing system. In such a way, a user moves his personal data to the new computing system.
However, several problems arise with this process. For example, a user cannot always predict the need to procure a new PC. A user cannot predict a failure, and it is possible such a failure will prohibit access to the user's data on the existing PC. Therefore, a user must institute a diligent backup process, such that in an event of a failure, the user can revert to the “last known good” data. Such diligence is time consuming and inconvenient.
Another problem is that storage of the backup may require large amounts of storage space, which can be cost prohibitive. Furthermore, storage of the backup on the user's premises does not protect the data from problems such as theft, fire, or corruption, that can occur at the user's premises.
Even if the customer overcomes these difficulties and maintains an image of the existing data, the copying of the image to the new computing system is labor intensive. There can be large amounts of data, requiring an inconvenient amount of time.
A related problem is the event of a software failure. It is possible that such a failure, for example an operating system (“OS”) failure, will prohibit access to the user's computing system. It is further possible that replacing the OS with the last known good version will fix the failure. However, even if the user has access to an image including the last-known-good version of the OS, the failure may prevent the user from copying the image onto the computing system.
There exists conventional solutions to some of the above problems. For example, there are conventional backup utilities that can store an image of the user's computing system on tapes, floppy disks, or other removable media. There also exists a conventional backup utility that can store an image at a remote site over the Internet.
However, none of the above conventional solutions address the inconvenience encountered by a user that desires to upgrade his computing system yet maintain his own data. Furthermore, the conventional solutions do not address the situation where a software failure prevents restoring the computing system to the last known good configuration.